


realizing this is not where I want to be, not where I want to go

by eternal_elenea



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Implied Relationships, Pre-Canon, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternal_elenea/pseuds/eternal_elenea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a kingdom upon his shoulders and a world that is his mantle and William is bound and so he will fight. It is no matter that he cannot win, nor that there is no one left to reclaim Snow White's throne. <i>Pre-canon.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	realizing this is not where I want to be, not where I want to go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodofpyke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodofpyke/gifts).



> Title from "Dirty Paws" by Of Monsters and Men. Written for the [Snow White and the Huntsman ficathon](http://anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com/810453.html) on Livejournal.

In the summer, he dreams of snow and, in the winter, he dreams of dust. Always, always, he dreams of fire and of screams; of a gate closing and a girl, dark as a lost shadow, just out of reach.  
  
  
  
Snow White is dead, has been for near eight years, and William knows better than to wish for her anymore, knows better than to wake, screaming, reaching towards some unfathomable abyss. He knows better, but.  
  
  
  
The seasons have dried up, along with the kingdom, vast and empty and black, black, black. The truth is that nothing has been salvaged, neither winter nor summer, no crops and no peoples and no sliver of hope. The truth is that the kingdom died right alongside Snow White; that William should have died with both.  
  
He knows, he knows better; he is a prince. He knows better. But.  
  
  
  
An army gathers within their keep, strung together with fear and hunger and a tasteless sort of courage. An army crowds together in their keep, with old sillhouettes in their eyes, and they are strung together more of desperation, of necessity, than of even a meager inch of belief.  
  
They are barely an army, but an army they are still. They are barely an army, but they will fight.  
  
  
  
There is a kingdom upon his shoulders and a title for which he is destined and a castle too, a throne. There is a world that is his mantle and William is bound and so he will fight. He is bound and he'll fight, but to win, well. It is another matter entirely.  
  
He does not feel like one, but he is still a prince. Witches likely do not feel like witches either, he tells himself, but it is still a prince's duty to slay a witch, no matter how they each think of themselves. It is still his boon to fulfill, until he turn victorious or die at the creature's feet, clawing at her robes and regretting any crown set upon his head.  
  
  
  
There is duty and there is justice and then there are dreams more tenuous.  
  
  
  
He lays on the edge of the beach, watching the castle walls grow seemingly taller, watching the sea roll in and the whispering of trees, brittle. He climbs them anyway, towards an unsighted end in the sky, dreams of resting on eaves and picking apples. He climbs them anyway and teeters on the edge of the world, thinking of a land other than his own – lakes of ice and summer leaves, something to look forward to, a memory forged.  
  
  
  
In the dreams he cannot help, Snow is a woman and not a child. She has hair dark as blood and lips like night, she has a throne under her fingertips; she has a shard of light in her eyes that William's never seen. In his dreams, she is a queen and she is alive and she is everything that he wants for himself, for the kingdom.   
  
 _Are they not the same, he and the kingdom? Would she not save them both?_  
  
  
  
He learns, he learns, how to shoot a bow and an arrow; learns how to wield a sword. He learns, with lacerated fingers and a fringe in his eyes, how to fight for the world that he has been given, that he will one day mold into his own. His is not yet this kingdom, but he will have it, no matter how many bloody wounds, how many lives lost, how many times he collapses in the sand.   
  
He will have it, even as his army dwindles, fraught with time and with bloodshed; even as the land finds a learned helplessness that they do not themselves understand and a terror in their eyes they do not themselves see. William, oh William, he understands and sees both, thinks of running from this world that he will not win – doesn't give in, doesn't give in, doesn't give in.   
  
  
  
A flower blooms at the edge of the forest, alongside the beach, for the first time in near a decade. A flower blooms and that is even more powerful than the truth of any word, for it is seen with William's own eyes. "She lives," William says, promise in his smile.


End file.
